New era for Mesquite?

Mesquite has a new mayor with the appointment of Allan Litman to take over for Mark Wier, who resigned May 12 after accepting a job in St. George. With a new mayor comes an opportunity to start a new era.

Mesquite needs one badly. Two issues that came to light recently serve as evidence.

One of the issues relates directly to Wier. Just one day after an April 22 meeting — the very one at which he announced his resignation — Wier vetoed a 3-2 vote by the city council that denied spending $1 million on a splash pad.

That’s right. A mayor used his power of veto under Nevada law to enact an expenditure unilaterally that an elected city council had voted against. Basically, he made a decision to spend $1 million in taxpayers’ money on his own.

In the aftermath, many questions have arisen. One is the legality of such a veto in the first place. Another is linked to the council, which voted to override the former mayor’s veto. The hitch is the council only had four people who could vote on the override because one of its members was serving as mayor for the meeting, and four people are needed to vote to override a veto on a five-person council.

So, is the veto still in place? Or is the veto overridden? Nobody, including city staff, appears to know. And that shows a lack of leadership for allowing the situation to spiral out of control to a state of ambiguity in the first place.

A second example has nothing to do with Wier or hardly any — if at all — current city officials. It involves a woeful lack of oversight with the construction of the Highland Hills development. The city recently acquired the services of a Las Vegas law firm to handle litigation brought against it by families whose homes are literally sinking into an old landfill. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the city is in error in some way because city staff approved permits to allow construction and occupancy of the subdivision within a 200-foot buffer required by law from former landfills. Several of the 68 homes in Highland Hills were built too close to or actually on top of the landfill.

The city is trying to cover itself, but there really is no defense. The people in charge at the time messed up, and now there is a mess to clean up.

But as we stated, this is a chance for a new era in Mesquite. It’s a chance for the new leadership to take charge.

They can do what’s right by the people who bought homes in Highland Hills. It will be expensive, but someone at city hall signed off on those permits and plats. New leadership also can take charge of city staff members and work with them to avoid future embarrassments such as the haze that has resulted over the splash pad vote, veto and attempt to override the veto.

Mesquite is a growing, vibrant community. While it certainly has faced its share of economic challenges in recent years, it’s still a great place to live and visit.

But if it hopes to draw in new residents, leadership must clean up the problems that have resulted from lack of oversight and study.

A new mayor offers a chance at a new era. And that era can start now if city leaders choose to swallow their pride and do what’s right.